Saturday 18 January saw the first of our monthly RISE! REPAIR! REBUILD! forums, which brought people from across Leeds to the Core at the Thackray Museum of Medicine to discuss ways of helping each other stay safe from harm and violence, and providing support for those in need.
The group began by seeking to establish the meaning of community safety before determining ways in which they could help residents to feel safer where they live. The key takeaways were:
- Community is… knowing who your neighbours are, a place of safety where shared values come naturally, a concept that is ‘conditional’ upon one or a set of factors or rules (or perhaps an illusion?), an idea that builds a sense of togetherness among different peoples, but may mask divisions and cliques within itself
- What makes people feel safe is… having the strength in numbers to take the risk of standing up to violence and threats to your peace, (in-person) neighbourly interactions and acts of kindness both as forms of investment and solidarity and as a way to build a feeling of community in your local area, and having social events to go to
- What makes people feel unsafe is… police presence that profiles and causes harm to minoritised people, or doesn’t respond to calls for action that actually help and provide safety, poorly run and funded local services ‘not fit for purpose’, and a lack of neighbourly contact
- Solutions within our power include interventions and offers from each other, large or small, such as cleaning teams; creating themed groups and local events such as sewing; social get togethers; open houses and offering spare rooms; creating codes to help those in acute distress (eg typing a full stop in a text); helping someone new to the city or country to feel welcome and know their way round; helping people deal with difficult systems (eg writing an email or putting in a complaint)
- Solutions that need other people to make them happen include building a support network (keeping aware of potential power dynamics and vulnerabilities), mutual action, the creation of toolkits to share with one another, community notice boards at frequently visited sites (eg doctors, shops, cafés, etc), pooling resources (food, transport, etc)
Attendees also made accountability pledges, each person promising one specific thing that they could do to help another person by the date of the next meeting (Saturday 22 February). Future meetings will seek to generate community-led solutions to local safety issues focused on selected themes.
RISE! REPAIR! REBUILD! is a monthly forum hosted by Harehills Action Team, Racial Justice Network, and StopWatch. For more information on the project, you can contact StopWatch by email (info@stop-watch.org) or phone (0208 228 5737).